Mr Speaker, while the ANC has a cadre deployment policy, it deploys capable people in positions, including people who are not from the ANC. At one point we even deployed an American who came and worked in these enterprises. However, even at that particular time the situation did not indicate that we had an employee from the United States who, as well as earning a lot of money, was deployed by the ANC. The problems remained.
The ANC inherited these enterprises and they were not rosy. In the past they had been very exclusively run by a very particular set of people in this country. That's part of the reason that we are doing the review. We want to deal with a problem that we found there. This is a problem that has been very difficult to resolve.
We will always ensure that people of merit are employed in any situation. We are not going to exclude ANC people simply because they are cadres of the ANC. [Applause.] We have said on numerous occasions that we are looking at deployment in terms of merit, regardless of which party one belongs to. I don't think people should be punished or not be employed, because they are ANC cadres.
In fact, in other democracies, if a new party comes into power, everybody else is removed and the new party comes in with its own cadres. This happens in democracies. [Applause.] One of those democracies is the United States, one of the leading democracies in the world. As a new party comes into power, others pack their bags and go. There is not even a debate about it.
Let us discuss the issue of merit. What we should be doing is to persuade government to employ people of merit. We should not be concerned about the ANC deployment policy as we currently are. Not every person who is in government is an ANC cadre. I think we must deal with this issue from that point of view.
We agree on the fact that we need to employ people of merit. However, this business of saying that the ANC must not have its own people working for government, as if it is a rule in democracy, is false. We are, in fact, a better democracy than others. In a democracy there is not one standard of what happens with regard to public servants. That issue is very clear and we should be clear about it. Thank you. [Applause.]